One thing that miffs me a bit after so many years is why the legitimacy of bitcoin is still being discussed and attacked so many years later.
Compare with internet: in 1999-2000 it was already clear that Internet would support many kinds of businesses and since then nobody (or almost nobody) opined that "we gonna tax that 'evil' internet or declare that it consumes too much server power".
Short answer 1: Not to be snide, but either you are very young, or you have a short memory. The way you said that—LOLWUT? Of course, there was
and is plenty of hyperventilating about the “evil Internet!!!!”
The Internet ignited political firestorms over free speech, among other issues. Remember
the Blue Ribbon campaign?
Your 1999–2000 timeframe was full of Internet controversies—many of which continue to this day, in some form and in some degree. I recall a ton of mass-media FUD about how the Internet is a tool for criminals—infested with hackers, scammers, and child molesters—a
scary place, a
scary thing that can literally get you kidnapped or murdered if you are so crazy or stupid as to try (gasp!) “online dating”.
Today, it has morphed into scaremongering about how we all need salvation delivered at the hands of the heroic Trust and Safety Teams at Twitter,
Facebook “Meta”, and other centralized silos of heavily censored, manipulated communications. Forget 1999–2000. It’s 2022, and the
free Internet is still under attack by those whose vision of the “Internet” is a new and worse version of AOL,
et al.That reminds me—not specifically about your post, but about the state of “crypto”:
Old-school “crypto” cred is reserved for those who remember the first iteration of the Crypto Wars: U.S. export restrictions, Netscape SSL with 40-bit keys, LOL. Activists getting RSA tattoos, in the timeframe you state. Long before it even reached that point,
PGP was created by Phil Zimmerman as an activist-who-changes-the-world-by-writing-code type of response to then-Senator Joe Biden’s bill to ban strong encryption!Bitcoin and PGP share DNA: Hal Finney, who was essentially the co-creator of PGP, was
Bitcoin User #2 who received
the very first non-coinbase Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi (
some interesting analysis).
Anyone who doesn’t
use PGP has no crypto-cred,
IMNSHO. Because PGP is real crypto. “Crypto” does not mean a VC-owned cesspit of Twitter-shilling for shitcoins: It means
cryptography. It means using Bitcoin, PGP, Tor (Satoshi himself used Tor!), and otherwise intelligently applied cryptography (sorry, Jay, I will include some halfway-decent altcoins in that; I think it’s sad that >99.9% of altcoins give the rest a bad name).
If you don’t use PGP, then you are a n00b and a poseur as bad as a nocoiner. Security and privacy are important issues, just as financial freedom is an important issue; I will shame the hell out of anyone who does not care about important issues. Now,
get off my lawn!Short answer 2: The Internet was not created to protect people from big-bank corruption. Did you really suppose that the big banks, their pet politicians, and the whole system of financial corruption would take Bitcoin lying down? Are Bitcoiners really that naïve?
POS and the “too much energy” organized propaganda campaign are political and economic attacks for the benefit of those who don’t want you to “Be Your Own Bank”.
A few months ago, I wrote a long rant to a friend about how the market is corrupted because traders figure PnL in dollars—everything is dollarized... Years ago, a higher proportion of Bitcoin traders figured PnL in BTC.
Why do you have such a tendency to frequently frame matters in terms of "the good ole days used to be better", but now "things are going to shit?" Asking for a friend.
Because it’s true.
Earlier, I wrote a long essay about this. Set it aside. Mulling it.
Thanks for the protip about that POW vs. POS megathread. If you don’t mind, it
may absorb energies that would have gone into finishing long replies to your earlier long replies on that subject—not sure yet. I wrote too much to you, not too little—I got bogged down trying to organize it and cut it down to something other than publishing books in WO. I appreciate the discussion with you.
Edit: Minor clarifications. Edit: Some significant elaboration.
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